Eco-friendly basketball?

Hockey, soccer and other games dominate the Swedish sports scene, while basketball has a long way to go before establishing a strong following.

However, last night, I experienced the Svenska Basketligan (Swedish Basket League) thanks to an invite by new friends Holly and Gabe. A crowd of a few hundred people cheered on the game between the reigning national champs, Norrköping Dolphins, and our very own Eco Örebro.

Clad in green uniforms, Eco, according to the team’s website, makes a claim that they are the most environmentally conscious team in this league.
UPDATE: Thanks to help from a Swedish person (in comments), I was able to find where the environmental policy was on the website, and read about how the team has "planted rainforest equivalent to the amount of emissions caused by the team's travel."(note, this is the rough Google translation). They also have strict waste separation at events and sell only organic tea and coffee. I did a search to see if there were any other such movements on other basketball teams, but all I could find were basketballs made from recycled materials.

Trying to be more environmental is of course a good thing and a particularly strong focus in Sweden and Scandinavia. My global journalism class is going to Finland in November for a media and climate change course, and multiple professors at my university are working on climate change-related research.

Eco put up a good fight but lost to the Dolphins. It was still within 10 points, which is pretty good since they were playing the championship winners, so I have a feeling I’ll go again, and perhaps buy one of those shirts with the greenery surrounding the logo. Russell, whose obsession with American football is followed by basketball as a close second, was pretty sad to miss the game since he was in Germany for a business trip. He proposed we make a fan group called “Eco freakos,” but that’s still up for debate.


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